1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a high-quality character generator which generates character fonts and establishes the developed forms thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional dot-matrix type character font generators which are used in information processing apparatuses, various types of data reduction methods have been used for generating large-scale font characters consisting of a great number of dots.
A conventional character font generator is disclosed in Japanese patent laid-open publication No. 163891/1988. This prior art font character generator retrieves several sampling points configuring a character from a sampling point file, and produces lines called skeleton lines that constitute the character by a skeleton line calculator using an approximation method. After that, the character generator determines, by means of a modifying information calculator, patterns associated with modifying information which are specified in advance with regard to respective points constituting the skeleton lines, and supplies and stores data representative of the patterns to an image memory.
This conventional high-quality character generator, however, has a disadvantage in that it requires an increasing number of sampling points to achieve more natural and beautiful characters, thus increasing the amount of information per one character. This makes it difficult to store data representing a great number of characters into a limited number of ROMs so as to incorporate them into output devices such as a printer or a CRT.
Furthermore, it requires additional sampling points to modify the printing type of characters or to join characters as cursive letters.